Patrick vetoes option to keep Taunton State Hospital partially open during independent study

Gov. Deval Patrick said no to the efforts of legislators to keep Taunton State Hospital. On Sunday, Patrick vetoed a $5.1 million line item allowing the Taunton State facility to maintain 45 acute care beds after the year ends while an independent study is used analyze the need for mental health resour...

Gov. Deval Patrick said no to the efforts of legislators to keep Taunton State Hospital.

On Sunday, Patrick vetoed a $5.1 million line item allowing the Taunton State facility to maintain 45 acute care beds after the year ends while an independent study is used analyze the need for mental health resources in the state. The line item was inserted by the state House of Representatives and the Senate after the governor in January slated the 169-bed facility in Taunton for a complete shutdown.

Patrick said he remains dedicated to closing Taunton State, consistent with his administration’s “Community First,” which emphasizes the placement of mental health patients in community homes that are operated by state-funded vendors. Patrick added $9 million to this year’s state budget to promote housing and programs to integrate the mentally ill to live and work in society, as opposed to locked, institutional settings.

Many critics of Patrick’s decisions regarding Taunton State support a community first initiative, but they say the real issue is that there is a shortage of beds available throughout the state for the patients with acute care needs, resulting in more mental health patients winding up homeless or in jail. Patrick is maintaining 626 acute care beds in the state Department of Mental Heath system, but many critics are expressing concerns about hospitals being flooded with mental health crisis patients along with the lack of access to acute care beds in the region after Taunton State is closed.

State Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, who helped urge his fellow legislators to approve the $5.1 million item to keep Taunton State open, said of the veto that it was troubling to hear that Patrick is not listening to families of the patients from southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands who are served by Taunton State and want the facility to remain open.

“It’s disappointing that the administration would not allow the 45 beds to be maintained and then go ahead and allow the committee to go ahead with the study, because it is something the legislature has spoken on and the patients’ families have spoken loudly and clearly,” Pacheco said.

Pacheco said that while there may be good intentions on the part of the administration in favor of more modern facilities, the situation involves more than numbers.

“I see (Patrick’s) management style is going along with whatever the Secretary of Health and Human Services wants,” Pacheco said. “It’s all about budget numbers. There are faces behind the number. There are patients and families and staff who will be impacted quite negatively if the governor’s veto is upheld.”

Pacheco said at this point State Rep. Patricia Haddad, D-Somerset, has already started to work to see if she can have an override vote taken in the House on the vetoed line item, which could happen as soon as early this week. An override needs to go through the House first before it goes up to Senate as part of a budget authorization bill process.

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Pacheco said at this point he’d encourage any citizen in Taunton to call members of the House and Senate, particularly the Ways and Means Committee chairs, to request the veto be overridden.

Brenda Venice, president for the southeastern Massachusetts region for the National Association on Mental Illness, said that the veto is “a terrible thing that (Patrick) has done to innocent mental health patients who don’t have a voice.” Venice said shipping patients patients out to Worcester is wrong.

“We already have a shortage of beds,” said Venice, of Fall River. “Shutting down Taunton State isn’t going to save any money. It’s going to result in more people on the street and in jail, because when they are sick, they do things and end up in jail. So where is it going the save Massachusetts any money? We need that study to show that we have a shortage of beds.”